In the process of making Shika's user dashboard more user friendly we have made some major changes by adding new widgets to the dashboard. With this you can now build your own widgets and give your users the freedom to choose which widgets he/ she wants to be shown on the dashboard.

We have created a new table #__tjlms_dashboard which contains all the widgets per users. If the users has not set any widgets to be shown or is using the default dashboard, basic dashboard plugins will be shown.

For Shika 1.0, user will not be able to select the widget and hence only the basic widget will be shown. This feature will be implemented in version 1.1.

Here is a snapshot of how one page chat-conversations view will look like in JBolo v3.3.

When I saw & used Canva the first time, it was love at first sight ! With its drop dead good looks, super intuitive drag & drop & ability to use free as well as super cheap paid graphic elements including stock photos to create classy graphics, it was extremely powerful.

To put it simply, Canva had me hooked

Believe me. I am no good at design. I mean i can appreciate good design & give inputs as to what might look good. But hey .. I am no designer. But my job does needs me to come up with graphics all the time. From blog images to newsletter headers & what not. If you can relate with that & don't want to avoid troubling your designer with every other request, then Canva is the tool you want !

The first thing that stuck me when I saw Canva was SocialAds. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a 'Banner Ad Designer' powered by canva to design images for Ads in SocialAds ? So i contacted Canva on twitter & they got back immediately with API access. During our discussions with Canva, we realised that Joomla in general as well as extensions like EasyBlog could benefit from a Canva integration. So thats what we decided to do first !

Update

This first stable version of Shika LMS for Joomla was released in April 2016. You can find out more about the product and its features here .

Shika in Marathi means 'to learn'. Like with many ideas, this idea started out of frustration of the lack of good LMS systems for Joomla. Sure there are a few but we saw a dire need of something different with a fresh approach.

Shika is a Learning Management System (LMS) for Joomla. Its been in development now for more than a year & is in production use at some of our clients. We are now beginning the process to generalize the development as a plug & play product for Joomla based eLearning.

While working with SocialAds, we have been working with some really innovative & scalable matching algorithms in order to deliver the best matching advertisements to users based on lots and lots of different variables. Our Current matching logic includes algorithms for Contextual Matching, Geolocation based matching, Profile field matching as well as a scalable plugin interface to add more matching algorithms.

These matching systems make for a great base for Building a scalable Advanced Search/ Parametric search system for Joomla. Some parts of this system are already developed & in action on some of our client sites using K2. We have also been able to scale the system to support native Joomla content in another case. Currently we are working on bundling these systems together to make a Search platform that can scale, support multiple extensions & also tie in to systems like SOLR.

To give a rough idea, it will allow admins to Define Indexers for various components & decide which fields should be included in the Parametric Index. This part is very similar to the configure targeting part in SocialAds. On the frontend, depending on what extension or more broadly content type you want to seach, advanced search forms will be displayed. A plugin architechture will allow adding support for any extension..

While people have been busy building Admin apps for Joomla that work on the Iphone & what not, we have been busy taking it all a step further. The release has been delayed due to constant architectural changes with Joomla 1.0 then 1.5 & now 1.6 coming. Due to our long development cycle we have had to always adapt our code to the latest release :(

{jb_pin}We know Google is trying to get people to Move with Google Motion, but we realise that people are really lazy & want to give a solution that people will actually use.. Please read on for details on downloads & how to use.. {/jb_pin}

We have some great news for all you Joomla Social Network administrators & owners.. We have a great line up of some cool Social Extensions coming very very soon ! Here's a quick sneak at them :)

A. Suggested Events

Based on our Network Suggest system, we bring you another suggestions module which will suggest events based on your profile information. As in Network suggest, you can chose what fields you want to use for the matching. Now you will be able to make your Events in JomSocial even more viral ! This will be available for JomSocial first. We are not sure which extension we shall use for integration with CB.. but Eventlist is high on our list of choices..

B. Show Similar Profiles

Want to see profiles on the site similar to the one you are looking at now ? Then this is the extension for you ! When a user visits a profile, he shall be shown top X matching profiles in a module. This will be available for JomSocial as well as CB.

Its finally in the Labs ! With Social Ads for JomSocial, you can create Facebook like demographically targeted ads to show on Your JomSocial Site. This extension allows advertisers to create their advertisement , Target the users they want to show the advertisement to, Decide if they want to pay by impressions or per click, Pay online & get the advertisement started up right away !

This extension promises to revolutionize Social Networking in Joomla. Demographic advertising which has been in place on Facebook for some time now can be easily added to your own JomSocial based website. Though the first release will be for JomSocial, we shall be rolling out versions with CB & the soon to come Anahita Support as well !

The possibilities of this engine are amazing & future releases will come packed with even more features.

We hope the community appreciates this idea & comes forward with feedback to make the system even better. We shall be blogging about the development regularly & also open it up to select beta testers before the public release.

The latest entry in the Techjoomla Labs, J!Growl, is a extensible live alerts framework for Joomla sites that allows admins to set alerts for any number of events which are extensible via plugins. With J!Growl, it is possible to send real time notifications of events on the website when they are online.

We are into the Beta Version now & want some beta testers to come in & help us test the system on Production or near Production websites. We shall be selecting a total of 10 beta testers from the applications. Currently J!Growl Ships with Plugins to show alerts for "User Login & Logout" & "JomSocial Private Message Received " Please click on read more to see the Beta testing schedule & to apply as a Beta tester.

We are giving out a 6 Month Subscription of the extension when it is released to all Beta testers.

J!Growl is a real time notification system for any kind of notification in Joomla. Simple things examples might be a Growl alert when a a user logs in, or when you get a new message,etc..

We have created J!Growl in such a way that it can be completely customized. It can well be integrated with other components to display their own custom notifications via plugins.

J!Growl gives developers the opportunity to create their own plugins. These plugins can add their own custom notificastions to the site. We will be providing a developer documentation to help you in this.

Recently we have been working on a brand new extension called as Mail Alerts. This is a extremely flexible Email alerts system for Jooomla & Can work with CB & JomSocial as well. The system is extremely flexible via use of plugins of the type "emailalerts" which allow you to build your own plugins to extend our extension to Push your content into the Mail alerts sent.. You can read more about this extension in the Labs. Click here to go there.

We are into the Beta Version now & want some beta testers to come in & help us test the system on Production or near Production websites. We shall be selecting a total of 10 beta testers from the applications. Currently Mail Alerts Ships with Plugins for Joomla Content, JomSocial , CB, VIrtuemart, SOBI & MyBlog. We shall need the Beta testers to atleast have 2 of these extensions installed on their site.

Have you seen mail alerts that networks like Facebook & Linked in send to their users periodically ?

How would you like to send your users periodic email alerts of whats happening on your site or social network ? If you would, then our new component in the Labs , JMail Alerts might be just the thing for you.

This is one extension that has been in our development queue for quite a while, but other products have taken priority & so this one though being conceptually ready for some time, was not ready for testing yet..

So what will 'People You May Know' do?

This module (Is also likely to be available as a CB or JomSocial Plugin to show on profiles) will show you Friend Suggestions based on your current friends.

You might have already seen such a feature work on Facebook,Orkut & other large Social Networks.

Do You Want to be Techjoomla Beta Tester?

Techjoomla is launching a new Beta Tester program. In order in increase community participation in our product development, we have decided to take in 10 beta testers for our upcoming releases. Beta testers will be awarded a full 12 Month Subscription of the Product that they beta test for along with a 50% off on any product of their choice! Beta Testers shall be needed to file bug reports in the forums to be setup for that purpose & the Feature Tracker as apllicable.

Techjoomla and this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Joomla! Project™. Any products and services provided through this site are not supported or warrantied by The Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters, Inc. Use of the Joomla!® name, symbol, logo and related trademarks is permitted under a limited license granted by Open Source Matters, Inc.